Make / Sh(it wasn’tift supposed to be like this) Vox Populi : Juried Exhibition 2020 ePublication Guest curators Brittany Webb and James Claiborne Contents Click on a name to jump to that page Click in the document to return to this page Director's Introduction 4 Christopher Fluder 83 Nicolo Gentile 87 JURORS' ESSAYS Aimee Gilmore 90 Brittany Webb 5 Terrell Halsey 92 James Claiborne 7 Dara Haskins 95 Brandan Henry 97 VOX COLLECTIVE'S PICKS Terrance James, Jr 100 Superlatives 9 Lisa Johnson de Gordillo 104 Anya Kotler 109 ARTISTS Sandra Eula Lee 112 Aurora Abzug 11 Chelsey Luster 115 alejandro t acierto 14 Emilio Maldonado 119 Noel W Anderson 17 Chanel Matsunami Govreau 124 Jackie Andrews 20 with Danny Hwong 125 Tabitha Arnold 23 Lisa McCutcheon 128 Sheyda Azar 27 Danielle Morris 131 Andrea Barnes 31 John Muse 135 Emily Bayless 35 Sophie Najjar 138 Jasmine Best 39 Malkia Okech 141 Jan Brugger 42 Harvey Opgenorth 145 Keith D Buswell 46 Xander Opiyo 148 Christopher Capriotti 50 Sung Eun Park 151 Bonnie Mae Carrow 54 Madeleine Pierce 154 Alexandra Chiou 57 Chloe Luisa Piñero 158 Melanie Delach 60 Nancy Rivera 162 Doriana Diaz 63 Paloma Rosenzweig 165 M Asli Dukan 67 Stephon Senegal 172 Kimberly English 70 Zac Thompson 177 Alex Farr (aka Raff) 74 Zach Van Horn 182 Alanis Forde 77 Rick Vaughn 186 Wesley Flash 80 Andrea Walls 191 3 Director's Introduction ▼ Every year for the past 16 years, Vox Populi has issued an international Open Call seeking artwork submissions to be considered by guest curators for inclusion in a large juried exhibition that typically extends throughout all the many galleries and spaces of our Philadelphia venue every summer. The opportunity was developed as a routine way for our organization and audiences to look further afield and through the lenses of invited guests at shared tendencies, strategies and themes occuring in the field of contemporary art by an often unpredictable group of early and mid-career artists from all over the country and beyond. Yet, now in the early days of 2021, its safe to say that there has been absolutely nothing typical or routine about the last twelve months, or since we initially launched our 2020 Open Call that has at last culminated in the creation of this beautiful, robust ePublication. Make/Shift: it wasn't supposed to be like this offers compelling glimpses of creative practice today through recent artworks by a far- reaching group of 51 artists and stands as a testament to the creativity that surely endures and resonates all the more poignantly today, even through the most chaotic Publication Credits and bewildering of times. Curators: James Claiborne Vox Populi is so grateful to our brilliant and generous guest curators, James Brittany Webb Claiborne and Brittany Webb, for their thoughtfulness, their many insights, and their adaptability. James and Brittany remained energetic about this project all Publication Design: throughout its many revisions and iterations - always with good humor and mutual Natalie Hijinx Roopa Vasudevan support - and we can’t thank them enough. The Vox Populi Exhibition Committee, composed entirely of volunteer artists Copy-Editor: within our collective, also deserves our massive congratulations and gratitude Blanche Brown for completing this work. Particular thanks is owed to Natalie Hijinx and Roopa Exhibitions Committee: Vasudevan for their labor, inventiveness, and the wonderful design of this Katie Rauth, Stephanie Bursese, ePublication. Thank you to Blanche Brown for your careful work copy-editing the Lea Devon Sorrentino, publication, and thank you to Katie Rauth, Stephanie Bursese, Lea Devon Sorrentino, Natalie Hijinx, Zach Hil, Imani Roach Zach Hill, and Imani Roach for your additional contributions, large and small, to this project and its related programming. Most importantly, thank you to all the artists whose work appears here and to all © Vox Populi, Inc who applied to this Open Call. Our work and projects are made possible by your enthusiasm and generosity, and it is your work that keeps Vox Populi afloat and alive. ◆ Danny Orendorff, Executive Director 4 Brittany Webb Guest Curator ▼ Putting it mildly, 2020 was a series of unfortunate events. A global pandemic, a recession, travel restrictions, citizen uprisings against injustice & state crackdowns against those uprisings are the backdrop against which artists and cultural workers have attempted to live, work, and sometimes respond. It meant that our navigation systems were constantly recalculating…in ways that the producers of the Vox Annual Juried Exhibition have had to embrace. Here, in what should have been Vox’s summer show, artists offer us visual dispatches of the moment in conversation with a range of concerns about ecology, colonization, historical memory, home (as nation, as dwelling, as body), and across an array of media that include painting, sculpture, drawing, collage, installation, photography and time based media. Various intentional uses of media tease out the link between form and theme. In sculpture, Emily Bayless and Aimee Gilmore explore class and domesticity in everyday life with Bayless embracing the fragility of clay as a relationship of power while Gilmore reifies how motherhood warps time in both her old and new life. Bonnie Carrow and Nicolo Gentile are concerned with minimalist sculpture: Carrow’s use of brick considers the way the repetition of mundane objects is a technique of alienation while Gentile’s approach to queer minimalism involves the use of ▶ Dr. Brittany Webb is the Evelyn and Will Kaplan Curator of Twentieth Century Art and the John Rhoden Collection at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). She is currently at work on Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale, with Jodi Throckmorton, Curator of Contemporary Art at PAFA (on view January 21- September 5, 2021) and a retrospective exhibition on 20th century African American sculptor John Rhoden (1916-2001). Webb came to PAFA from the African American Museum in Philadelphia. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Temple University and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Southern California. 5 Brittany Webb Guest Curator ◀ leather, latex and metal, luxuriating in materials that “slip reconstructing history and the body. There’s an aura of optimism between recognizable materials of kink, industry and sport in these collages and in the ways the artists variously describe to address the oscillating power dynamics of gender and their work as healing or hopeful. masculinities.” Sung Eun Park explores the conflicts between hope and reality, desire and forbiddance, and what some scholars might call structure and agency, while Sandra Eula Lee considers aftermaths of power in the form of the con/temporary “...earnest, righteous, materiality of urban sites, their debris (asphalt, brick, wire) and the productive tensions they can produce. Lisa Johnson weary, wistful, witty, de Gordillo and Emilio Maldonado produce art in dialogue with the U.S. imprint on Latin America and the Caribbean that are soulful, anxious, affective critiques of colonialism. The body and the nation are inextricably linked in geopolitical processes of making and thoughtful, hopeful” breaking: for Lisa Johnson de Gordillo, “braids stand in for human hair; children’s toys lined up in military formation connect play with indoctrination into war,” while Emilio Maldonado’s shrewd In a year of recurring ruptures some of the best internet memes use of everyday materials like candles and crutches in works circulating have used humor and wit to send up some of our about statehood and patriotism underwrite his articulation that most absurd taken for granted social arrangements. Some of the process narrates something “about the world, its ironies and artists here do the same. Wesley Flash questions the temporary conflicts, always poignant, relevant….” corporate rush to target queer consumers during Pride month in a series called “GAY MONEY.” Harvey Opgennorth’s “Harvey at Other artists are in conversation with the relationship between home” series features portraits of the artist in front of artwork the U.S. and the Caribbean. alejandro t. acierto’s video (Puro) on view in museum galleries dressed in a bathrobe and slippers, highlights the desire for consumption of an “authentic” Cuba interacting with the art publicly in ways that are perhaps (but authenticity as determined by outsiders) while M. Asli typically reserved for wealthy private collectors in their homes. Dukan’s work on how slavery in Antigua continues to create These critical stances are delivered to viewers with a wit that wealth stateside in Cambridge is a history for Dukan that helps us cope with the forces of late capitalism that seemingly is multinational and ancestral. Andrea Walls is concerned aim to crush us. with history and memory in her digital collage and embraces disorientation in ways that feel appropriate for this cultural The artists here are making work that is earnest, righteous, moment. Artists working in collage and moving image might be weary, wistful, witty, soulful, anxious, thoughtful, hopeful. The finding an especially useful media for these disjointed, unstable range of creative approaches to a remarkably difficult time—and times. Alexandra Chiou, Doriana Diaz, Lisa McCutcheon and a year that required constant recalibration, a year for which we Chloe Luisa Piñero all have poignant approaches to the form. all had other aspirations and plans—deserve to be celebrated. McCutcheon and Chiou draw inspiration from nature to create It wasn't supposed to be like this. ◆ collages that are light and lovely, with works by Piñero and Diaz 6 James Claiborne Guest Curator ▼ In the words of Deborah Cox’s popular 1998 R&B/Pop anthem; “How did we get here? Nobody’s supposed to be here.” Yet and still, here we are. 2020 presented itself as an ever-unfolding saga, as if it were the latest teledrama penned by beloved Scandal writer Shonda Rhimes, complete with a global pandemic, crushing economic pressures, nationwide protests countering deeply rooted racial inequalities — and all of this on top of a contentious and unpredictable U.S.